Kolkata, June 14 2009: Palash Chandra has a haunted look.

The Sunderbans labourer, the lone survivor of the vicious attack by Manipuri militants at the Central Agricultural University in Iroisemba, had come within a hair's breadth of death.

A bullet grazed past his ear.

The close shave and the sight of his friends being murdered brutally for no fault of theirs sends shivers down his spine.

The traumatized Palash was the one who escorted the coffins of Gourango Mandal (27), Dilip (25), Subodh Mistry (18) and Jaganath Mondol (35) to Kolkata on Saturday.

When TOI caught up with the van carrying the coffins, he could barely speak.

"When we were working at the agricultural university on Thursday evening, two locals called us to the ground floor verandah of the campus," Palash said.

"Unknown to us, gunmen had sneaked in and suddenly shot us from behind.

The other four were riddled with bullets, one went past my ear.

I got up and ran.

I looked back to see my friends lying in pools of blood.

The two locals who called us were stabbing them with choppers".

Wails broke out at Kolkata airport when the coffins arrived on Saturday afternoon.

The bodies of Gourango, Dilip and Jaganath were taken to Pathar Pratima in the Sunderbans, and that of Subodh to his house in Behala.

"Our relative Vinod, who took the youths to Manipur, came back a few days ago to tell us that militants were demanding ransom' from him as he is earning money in their state.

We decided to bring Subodh back but before we could do anything, news came that he had been murdered," Subodh's father Gopal Mistry said.

Subodh's grandfather Kishori Mirdha is shattered.

"Lakhs of outsiders work in Kolkata.

Do we go around attacking them? Why did they kill my teenaged grandson?".

The bereaved families had asked railway minister Mamata Banerjee for help to get back the bodies early.

"We got in touch with her through local Trinamool leaders.

She made all the arrangements," said Jaganath's uncle Dibakar.

Mamata offered her condolences to the families.

"It is an unfortunate incident," the Trinamool Congress chief said.

Subho Mistry (17) had promised to buy his sister a mobile phone on his next visit.

But it never happened.

His body reached Bankimpally in Behala around 7.15 pm on Saturday.

He was one of the four labourers recently killed by the suspected terrorists in Manipur.

The bodies of Dilip Mondal, Gouranga Mondal, Jagannath Mondol and Subho Mistry arrived in Kolkata around 3 pm from Imphal on an Air India flight.

"We were working at the site when two Manipuri boys asked us to come out.

They made us sit on the field outside and shot at us from point blank range.

I escaped while the four boys died on the spot," said Palash Chandra, an eyewitness.